Rodger Fox
1953-2024
Few New Zealand musicians pursued their career with more tenacity than trombonist, composer, and jazz teacher Rodger Fox, who last year celebrated half a century as a professional musician. Fox has died at the age of 71 after a brief illness.
Fox led his Rodger Fox Big Band, a training ground for talent, for more than four decades. A few years ago, a concert audience in Auckland’s Bruce Mason Centre was asked how many had passed through the band’s ranks: more than half the room cheered.
He was in Wellington’s hit jazz-rockers Quincy Conserve in the 1970s, founding the band which bore his name in 1973. In the 1980s Fox took the band to Switzerland’s Montreux Jazz Festival for the first time. Ever since, ever-changing line-ups returned to Montreux, toured Poland, appeared at festivals and clubs in Las Vegas, Wichita, Monterey, and Los Angeles, played in Singapore and at Ronnie Scott’s in London.
And when his Big Band didn’t tour Fox would run smaller line-ups and brought some of the world’s best jazz musicians here to perform and give workshops, among them guitarists John Scofield and Mike Stern, and the late organist Joey DeFrancesco (who all played with Miles Davis), soulful singers Randy Crawford and Diane Schuur, and trumpeter Maynard Ferguson.
A man of tireless promotional energy, Fox organised his own festivals so he, his bands, and international guests (among them Los Angeles session musicians Bill Reichenbach, Chuck Findley, Bobby Shew and Michael Brecker, horn players on classic pop, soul, and jazz albums) could perform.
He formed the Wellington Jazz Orchestra and his Big Band recorded with blues artist Midge Marsden and classical pianist Michael Houstoun, released an album of Dave Dobbyn songs reimagined and their most recent, Plays Hone Tuwhare was inspired by the great Māori poet.
The Rodger Fox Big Band’s 50th anniversary last year was marked by a national tour early in the year entitled “The Big Drum Off” featuring top American session drummers Dennis Chambers, Gregg Bissonette and Peter Erskine. In October, the band collaborated with veteran local hip-hop star King Kapisi for a national tour which included Fox’s final appearance at the Wellington Jazz Festival.
In 2003 Fox was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM) for services to music, then in 2022 he received the higher honour of becoming a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (CNZM).
Given an Honorary Doctorate of Music by Massey University in 2005, Fox was a senior lecturer in jazz performance at the New Zealand School of Music at Te Herenga Waka.
